WND EXCLUSIVE

Unions, Latinos demand amnesty in 2013

'If Congress keeps erecting roadblocks ... we will look elsewhere'

Latinos and unions are demanding the passage next year of so-called comprehensive immigration reform, or amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, declared a former adviser to President Obama whose union group has close ties to the White House.

“We expect passage of comprehensive immigration reform next year,” declared Eliseo Medina, treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU.

Medina served on the National Latino Advisory Council of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

SEIU’s then-president, Andy Stern, was the most frequent visitor to the White House in 2009, according to White House visitor logs.

WND previously reported how in 2009 Medina explained issuing amnesty could ensure “progressive” victory in future elections as well as a “progressive” governing coalition for the long term.

“We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters,” stated Medina at a June 2009 Washington conference for the liberal America’s Future Now!

Medina said that during the presidential election in November 2008, Latinos and immigrants “voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates.”

“Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up,” he said.

“Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”

Obama plans massive amnesty wave

In his acceptance speech after winning re-election, Obama himself alluded to immigration reform for millions of illegal aliens currently residing in the U.S.

“We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America open to the dreams of an immigrant’s daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag,” he said.

While the president did not specify what kind of immigrant he was referring to, many took his statement as an ode to a future amnesty program.

According to Klein’s and Elliott’s book, progressive organizations behind White House policy have already crafted specific, second-term plans for Obama to issue amnesty to millions more illegal aliens living inside the U.S.

There are also designs to remove the caps on H-1B visas and green cards, a move that would bring in an untold number of new immigrants.

Other second-term plans include a program for government agencies to immediately register as voters the new Americans who would receive amnesty.

Stealth amnesty

The second-term amnesty plans come in the form of interagency directives, legislative attempts and a series of executive orders similar to Obama’s June 2012 order to stop deporting young illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children, if they meet certain requirements.

One section of “Fool Me Twice” documents how key progressive groups, including the Center for American Progress, helped to craft the dictates in the 645-page “Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009.”

The act, introduced Dec. 15, 2009, by Reps. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, and Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., with 91 original co-sponsors, has yet to pass.

The bill’s provisions, however, form the basis for the progressive organizations’ specific policy reports and recommendations on how Obama should approach the issue of amnesty, including during a second term. These same organizations were instrumental in helping to craft Obama’s first-term policies on immigration reform, Klein and Elliott show.

Specific amnesty plans documented in “Fool Me Twice” include a call for new restrictions placed on apprehending illegal aliens who are members of a newly defined “vulnerable population.”

The “vulnerable population” includes “individuals who provide financial, physical and other direct support to their minor children, parents or other dependents” – in other words, most illegal aliens inside the U.S.

Also grouped into the “vulnerable population” definition are “individuals who have been determined by a medically trained professional to have medical or mental health needs.”

The specific mental or health needs are not defined.

Progressive policy reports delivered to the White House, mirrored by directives in the amnesty bill, invent a new class of illegals – those from “community-based” and “faith-based” organizations.

The amnesty plan would make it illegal to apprehend “undocumented” persons in the “premises or in the immediate vicinity of a childcare provider; a school; a legal-service provider; a federal court or state court proceeding; an administrative proceeding; a funeral home; a cemetery; a college, university, or community services agency; a social service agency; a hospital or emergency care center; a health care clinic; a place of worship; a day care center; a head start center; a school bus stop; a recreation center; a mental health facility; and a community center.”

The plans also prohibit the apprehension of pregnant or disabled illegals.

Unrestricted visas, green cards

Other second-term progressive immigration plans documented in “Fool Me Twice” call for more immigrants to enter the U.S. legally.

The Center for American Progress, called the “idea center” of the Obama White House, highlighted those plans in a January 2012 report, “Immigration for Innovation: How to Attract the World’s Best Talent While Ensuring America Remains the Land of Opportunity for All.”

The center’s recommendations include eliminating the cap on the number of the H-1B visas provided to foreigners.

H-1B is the most widely used high-skilled immigration classification for temporary workers. Currently, the system is regulated by a congressionally established annual cap set at about 85,000 H-1B visas per year.

The CAP report also states the country isn’t giving out enough green cards. Currently, about 140,000 employment-based permanent visas, or “green cards,” are available each year. CAP asks the White House to remove the cap on those highly restricted visas.

The 2009 amnesty bill that “Fool Me Twice” shows forms the basis for future legislative and executive policies makes precisely the same CAP arguments for lifting the cap on visas in a section titled “Visa Reform.”

The bill’s solution, however, is to take the regulation of legal immigration away from Congress and vest it in an agency within the executive branch. The so-called Commission on Immigration and Labor Markets would establish “employment-based immigration policies that promote America’s economic growth and competitiveness while minimizing job displacement, wage depression and unauthorized employment in the United States.”

The executive branch, under the plan, would determine the number of new immigrants, as well as the people to whom visas would be issued.

Register new illegals as voters

“Fool Me Twice” documents specific, second-term progressive plans for government agencies to immediately register as voters the new Americans who would receive amnesty.

One such plan is outlined in a 32-page report from the progressive think tank Demos, “From Citizenship to Voting: Improving Registration for New Americans.”

Demos, like CAP, has been highly influential in crafting White House policy.

This particular Demos report was authored by Tova Andrea Wang, a senior fellow at both Demos, and a group called the Century Foundation, which works closely with the Center for American Progress.

The Demos report calls for the United States Citizenship and Immigrant Services, the USCIS, to fully implement a new policy to ensure “new Americans” are provided with a voter registration application at all administrative naturalization ceremonies.

Ultimately, USCIS should be designated as a full voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act so that every newly naturalized American is automatically given the opportunity to register to vote.

The report also calls for state and local election officials to be proactive in registering new citizens to vote by reaching out to their communities through every possible means.

Methodology

Klein and Elliott explain how they documented Obama’s second-term blueprint on amnesty.

The president’s first-term signature policies, including the “stimulus,” defense initiatives and Obamacare were crafted over years by key progressive think tanks and activists, usually first promoted in extensive research and policy papers, the authors document.

Some first-term policies were even recycled and modified from older legislative attempts that had previously been pushed by progressive Democrats, the authors show. Klein and Elliott, for example, documented the way in which progressive legislation and research papers that traced back to 2002 – and in some cases even to the 1990s –eventually made their way into what became Obama’s health care bill.

The Center for American Progress and Demos are two of more than a dozen key progressive groups behind some of Obama’s first-term agenda. These same progressive groups and key activists have been hard at work mapping out second-term recommendations for Obama.

CAP is run by John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who was co-chairman of President Obama’s 2008 White House transition team.

Podesta and CAP have had heavy influence on the crafting of White House policy. CAP routinely releases policy reports that are reportedly used in the formulation of Obama administration policy.

A Time magazine article profiled the influence of Podesta’s Center for American Progress in the formation of the Obama administration, stating that “not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan’s transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway.”

The article branded the CAP as the “idea factory” of the Obama administration.

Several former Obama administration officials have joined CAP. Donald Berwick, who served as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services until last December, just joined the liberal think tank when he stepped down.

Former EPA Commissioner Carol Browner is a CAP distinguished senior fellow, as is Van Jones, Obama’s former “green” jobs czar who resigned in 2009 after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and implied the Bush administration may have been involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Sen. Tom Daschle, Obama’s first choice as secretary of health and human services, is a CAP alumnus.

Unprecedented government control

Now that President Obama has been re-elected, how will he attempt to complete the fundamental transformation of America first pledged in 2008?

“Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed” may now be more relevant than ever.

The specific plans uncovered in the book have one major theme – massive, unprecedented government involvement in the private sector.

Obama has made clear he will use the next four years to push the generalized themes of “economic fairness” and a “new economic patriotism.” However, the president has not defined those mantras in detail.

“Fool Me Twice” not only uncovers the socialist origins of the “economic fairness” term but spells out the specific, second-term policy prescriptions recommended to the president by the very progressive groups, activists and advisers behind Obama’s first-term agenda.

Among the second-term Obama policies detailed in the book:

An expansive, de facto amnesty program for illegal aliens via executive order and interagency directives linked with a reduction in the capabilities of the U.S. Border Patrol and plans to bring in untold numbers of new immigrants with the removal of caps on H-1B visas and green cards.

Government-funded, neighborhood-based programs to better integrate the newly amnestied immigrants into society, including education centers and health-care centers. A “federal solution” to ensure that the amnestied immigrants are treated “equitably” across the United States.

The re-creation of a 21st century version of FDR’s Works Progress Administration program within the Department of Labor that would oversee a massive new bureaucracy and millions of new federal jobs;

Specific plans for a National Infrastructure Bank. This entity would “evaluate and finance infrastructure projects ‘of substantial regional and national importance’” and would finance “transportation infrastructure, housing, energy, telecommunications, drinking water, wastewater, and other infrastructures.”

Wresting control of the military budget from Congress by attempting to place an “independent panel” in charge of military spending while slashing the defense budget in shocking ways.

The vastly reduced resources of the U.S. armed forces will be spread even thinner by using them to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations and step up use of “peacekeeping” deployments;

A new “green” stimulus program and the founding of a federal “green” bank or “Energy Independence Trust,” which would borrow from the federal treasury to provide low-cost financing to private-sector investments in “clean energy.”

Detailed plans to nudge closer to a single-payer health-care system controlled by the federal government.

Federal government intervention to determine the “value” of individual jobs in the private sector instead of allowing employers to pay what they want.

The enactment of a “living wage” that would force all employers to increase the salaries of the nation’s workers to meet “basic needs” such as housing, food, utilities, transportation, health care and recreation.